Saturday, June 20, 2015

That's right; according to an Ivy League study which I cited in a previous post, we no longer live in a democracy. To refresh your memory, two researchers at Princeton University, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, have found that "...over the past few decades America's political system has slowly transformed from a democracy into an oligarchy, where wealthy elites wield most power."

Compiling data from over 1,800 different policy initiatives from 1981 to 2008, Gilens and Page conclude that rich, well-connected individuals now control the direction of the country, regardless of the will of the majority of voters. "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy...while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence."

Extrapolated to its logical conclusion, America is now controlled by a very small cabal of wealthy and powerful elites, mostly with extreme right-wing political views, who have literally purchased the judicial and legislative branches of the U.S. government and are spending billions to recapture the executive branch by 2016. In my previous post I described this type of system as an oligarchy, but it is even worse than that. It is fascism.

What is fascism? Benito Mussolini, an expert on the subject, defined fascism as the merger of the state and corporations to form a corrupt government which services only the needs of the elite few. In order for fascism to work, government officials need corporations to fund their political ambitions without restraint or judicial oversight. The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing unlimited political donations took care of that. But fascism needs much more to thrive. Shockingly, these elements are coming together in American society today.

1) A compliant, reticent, and wholly subservient media are necessary to look the other way. Investigative journalism in America is dead. Why? Because all major media outlets are controlled by large corporate conglomerates and are run for profit, not for truth-telling. We already know that FOX is not a real news network, but merely the manifestation of one sick man's (Rupert Murdoch's) pathological right-wing propaganda machine. But what is even sicker is that supposedly legitimate news organizations such as CBS (Westinghouse) and NBC (General Electric) are corporate subsidiaries unlikely to report on how America is becoming a neo-fascist state. [Note: GE contributes millions to right-wing candidates each election cycle.]

2) The greater good must be downplayed by a self-absorbed, distracted citizenry. Witness the rise of vacuous enterprises like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Take a good look at what passes for information on these sites and you will be appalled at the narcissistic trivia. Fascists want a society that is self-involved. Fascism cannot thrive under a system that is concerned with the greater good. Thus, those right wingers (neo-fascists) who attack Social Security, Medicare, and affordable health care are doing their masters' bidding.

3) War or the threat of war must be constant. Fascists control their citizens when the citizens are constantly cowering in fear of being overrun by hordes of foreigners. This fear more easily facilitates the next factor in the fascist formula--

4) The system must be rigged. Check. Sixty percent of our tax dollars go to defense contractors who, in turn, buy politicians who, in turn, continue to authorize military spending. It is a never-ending cycle; it is an out-of-control beast which cannot be killed. America runs on defense; it is a hugely profitable industry, and most American corporations feed at the pig trough. Naturally these corporations are going to buy politicians who will continue this system.

5) Truth must be trashed; pseudo-science must be elevated to fact. We see this in climate change denial and the elimination of evolution education in public classrooms. Under a fascist system the truth is malleable and for sale. Corrupt idiots like Republican Senator James Imhofe will regurgitate any sort of lie to keep their cushy jobs.

6) Minorities must be demonized and marginalized. The old fascist methods of mass murdering minorities (i.e., the Holocaust) are outdated; the new slaughter comes in the form of denigrating the worth and dignity of African-Americans and Latinos (largely liberal voters on the lower socioeconomic rungs). Right-wing pyschopaths who listen to the daily rants of Limbaugh and O'Reilly can easily justify in their deranged minds the voter suppression, welfare denial, even murder of minorities.

7) Dissent is forbidden. The media restrict real debate of issues, and left-wing advocacy is virtually non-existent on over-the-air TV, radio, and newspapers.

Had enough? I'll leave you with one more bit of warning. The following quote is from a member of Ronald Reagan's cabinet.

"Americans have given up the rule of law that protected their liberty. The silence of law schools and bar associations indicates that the age of liberty has passed. In short, the American people support tyranny. And that’s where they are headed."

Monday, June 1, 2015

In 1992 the Assassinations Record Review Board, a government agency charged with gathering and assessing all documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy, issued a mandate that all classified documents still being hidden away by the CIA and FBI be released no later than October 2017. That day is about 30 months off, and already the struggle to pry the truth loose is underway.

According to an article in Politico magazine, the head of the National Archives Special Access branch, a woman named Martha Murphy, has sent letters to the CIA, the FBI, and other government agencies to alert them that the time is coming for the release of all remaining classified documents pertaining to JFK’s murder.

“Within our power,” said Murphy, “the National Archives is going to do everything we can to make these records open and available to the public. And that is my only goal. There are limits to my powers and the president of the United States has the right to say something needs to be held for longer.” What does that mean? It means the new President (meaning whomever gets elected in 2016) and the CIA could fight to suppress the last remaining 40,000 documents related to the assassination. Why would the new President do that? No reason to, unless, God forbid, the new President is Jeb Bush. (See previous posts for the Bush family involvement in the planning and cover-up of JFK’s murder.) Why would the CIA continue to suppress documents? For the same reason the agency has withheld the truth for the last 50 years—to cover up its own guilt in the murder of the century.

According to Politico, “The withheld CIA files include those on some of the most mysterious and controversial figures in the history of American espionage — particularly individuals who were known to be involved in CIA assassination plots around the world. There are at least 332 pages of material on E. Howard Hunt, an almost mythical spymaster who is most famous for running the ring that broke into Democratic Party headquarters in Washington’s Watergate Hotel in 1972, setting in motion the events that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon."

In 1961 Hunt played a role in the CIA's botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. In the aftermath, anti-Castro Cubans and CIA operatives were deeply resentful of JFK's failure to provide air cover for the guerillas. Shortly before he died in 2007, Hunt claimed that Kennedy was killed in retaliation for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Hunt named names and referred to the assassination as "the Big Event."

Also under review by the special team of archivists are at least 606 pages about David Atlee Phillips, another CIA officer who won a medal for his role in overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954, went on to run operations in Latin America, and along with Hunt played a leading role in anti-Castro activities in Cuba. Phillips was accused — though never charged — of committing perjury when asked about agency ties to Oswald by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Phillips, too, late in life attributed the JFK assassination to "rogue" CIA officers. It is the type of information that many researchers believe the agency would still like to keep secret.

The Politico article names other CIA suspects. “‘I don’t see the CIA handing out 600 pages on David Atlee Phillips in two years,’ said Jefferson Morley, a leading Kennedy researcher and founder of JFKfacts.org, who has sued the CIA to reveal more information about several key figures known to be the focus of some of the withheld files.

“Another colleague of Phillips at the CIA was Anne Goodpasture. The career agency officer denied to congressional investigators in 1970 that she had any knowledge of recordings of Oswald’s phone calls in possession of the CIA’s Mexico City station, where she worked. But she later admitted in sworn testimony that she had, in fact, disseminated the tapes herself. A 286-page CIA file about her is among the documents that are supposed to be released in two years.”

There’s apparently a lot of dirt in those unreleased files that could, once and for all, definitively expose the CIA’s role in the execution of the 35th President. Don’t expect the agency to just turn over those documents without a fight.